2012 Statistics

Seven Dirty Words

The seven dirty words (or "Filthy Words") are seven English-language words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television". The words are: 

shit 
piss 
cunt 
fuck 
cocksucker
motherfucker 
tits 

At the time, the words were considered highly inappropriate and unsuitable for broadcast on the public airwaves in the United States, whether radio or television. As such, they were avoided in scripted material, and bleep censored in the rare cases in which they were used; broadcast standards differ in different parts of the world, then and now, although most of the words on Carlin's original list remain taboo on American broadcast television as of 2015. The list was not an official enumeration of forbidden words, but rather was compiled by Carlin. Nonetheless, a radio broadcast featuring these words led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that helped establish the extent to which the federal government could regulate speech on broadcast television and radio in the United States.

Impacts of Bitch

"Does the word “bitch” automatically represent a woman? And, if so, does it automatically indicate a woman who is mean, unlikable, whorish, and independent in an “obnoxious” way? Or, is it possible that when a woman is referred to as a “bitch” that it can be seen as a “good thing?” That is, instead of being harmful and degrading what if “bitch” indicated a strong, self-confident woman – a term of empowerment?" -http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/prba/perspectives/fall2002/celious.pdf

This is the question we will be asking throughout this assignment.

When it comes to music, the word Bitch is very influential. This website explains this in depth and is quite interesting -http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/09/06/160672019/who-you-calling-a-b
Many famous musicians have used the word bitch in their career at some point, and its not just young rappers as many would assume. Elton John's song 'The Bitch is Back' was a major hit in 1974 and there are many other songs you wouldn't think of when using this term.
On Spotify there are pages and pages of results when typing the word Bitch.

This music source is used by so many people and as you can see majority of these songs are classed as explicit. Except the first one, is this due to the word bitch itself or the context it is used in? 

Another source I found very very interesting was the following - https://mnwomenscenter.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/restructing-the-bitch-discussion/

This explains the use of bitch from a coloured skin perspective and is very well done, although it expands on other issues it is still relevant to the issue at hand. 

The majority of women have dealt with the experience of interacting with the word “bitch”. Some reject it altogether. Some have reclaimed the word for their own empowerment. Some view being a bitch as being manipulative, harsh, and cold. Some view being a bitch as being confident, powerful, and in control of their own destiny. And while these aspects of the conversation are very essential, I believe we often leave a key component out of the conversation when speaking cross-culturally. The word “bitch” means something very different for women of color as it does for white women. The “bitch” persona cannot easily be disconnected from the schema of a woman of color as it can for a white woman.

Case in point: the Oxford dictionary, one of the most prominent dictionaries, presents a subset to the definition of bitch that, when I first saw it, both angered me and made me feel ashamed as a woman of color, specifically a black woman. Here it is:

2: informal derogatory a spiteful or unpleasant woman.
–> black slang: a woman.

Now, just a quick tidbit of supplemental information: dictionaries are based on usage. They track the amount of times people use a word and how the word is used to determine the necessity of adding such word into a dictionary with a specific definition. Normally, it takes tens of thousands of recorded uses of a word to enter a word into the dictionary (hence “d’oh!” and “bootylicious”).

There are two things to ponder about this definition from Oxford. One is our culture has attached the word “bitch” to the character of a black woman so many times that it deserves to be integrated into our formal language system. Regardless of the word “slang” existing within the definition, it is still there. This is not present for other racial groups in the way it is present for black women. This says to the world that when I walk down the street, and people see me and identify me as black, it is acceptable to connect the word “bitch” to me and everything that it carries way before I even open my mouth or complete any sort of action.

The second aspect presented by this definition is that since it is considered “black slang”, that black people are responsible for creating this form for addressing a woman. Well…where could this notion have possibly emerged?

Cue Hip-Hop.

One thing I constantly struggle with as a conscious admirer of the hip-hop culture is the misogyny embedded into almost every facet of the experience. If there is one aspect of popular culture that is more disrespectful to women than anywhere else, it is hip-hop, and the worst part is that is it on display for the entire world to see and it is coming from the hands (and mouths) of black men predominately. But we as women, particularly black women, still partake in the culture. Most do not question it. Most end up embodying the objectifying persona. Few question or attack it. Recently, however, discussion has sparked back up regarding the usage of the word bitch within hip-hop as a reflection of the misogyny it represents.

Bitch Bad, Woman Good, Lady Better

On June 25th, prominent hip-hop artist from Chicago Lupe Fiasco released a single from his newest album Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album titled “Bitch Bad“. On August 22nd, he released the music video for the track. Now, the song presents many layers to the discussion of misogyny, including the recurrence of the “blackface” era, which is why I linked to RapGenius, a website that allows artists and listeners to present interpretations of rap lyrics. With that being said, I encourage you to play the video three times: first time just to listen to the song, then replay it a second time to watch the actual video, and then replay it a third time to listen to the song while reading the RapGenius interpretation. Here is the video:

There has been mixed criticism of “Bitch Bad”, including the fiery critique from Spin Magazine, sparking Fiasco’s decision to start a boycott of the publication, as well as a more positive critique from Colorlines.

From my vantage point, there is something to be said about the structure of the piece and how it perpetuates this idea of “bitch” and “black woman” being sometimes mutually inclusive and often confusing.

We are invited on a journey with a young boy and a young girl as they come of age in the era of hip-hop and the misogyny included in the culture. We see the young boy observing his mother singing rap songs that cause her to indirectly identify as being a “bad bitch” even though everything about her signals strength and honor. We see the young girl observing rap videos and seeing the supposedly successful black men, obviously men she is learning to be attracted to, praising the “bad bitches” in scantily-clad (lack of) clothing with coke-bottle bodies who will let these men do any and everything to them (“bad bitches, bad bitches, bad bitches/that’s all I want and all I like in life is bad bitches, bad bitches”). As a result, these two youth meet later in life with completely different views of what a bad bitch entails. The girl grows to embody the video-girl bad bitch externally, but since the boy does not grow to equate respect with the video-girl schema since his mother never carried herself in such a way, he does not see the girl as a bad bitch. To him, a bad bitch is an upstanding woman, and she is far from it. To her, she can be a bad bitch, as long as she can spin it to her advantage; if someone else calls her a bitch, however, it is automatically disrespectful. See the confusion?

Going back to the Oxford definition, Lupe presents a cause to such prevalence in this complex to the point it would be added to the dictionary. The music video is framed around a modern minstrel show. Minstrel shows occurred in the early 20th century, and the popularity of blackface gained its momentum in these venues. White actors would paint their faces black, often with materials such as tar, as well as paint stereotypical features of blacks such as large, red lips, and they would portray their characters as controversially stereotypical. Since the rise of television and film was still in its early stages, theatrical performances were the largest visual mass media outlet outside of print, so it was very easy to develop a stereotypical phenotype of African-Americans through this outlet. Over time, the prevalence of blackface waned, although it still occasionally arises in our current society, particularly around Halloween.

Fast forward to today and the “Bitch Bad” video, we see these “actors” (who are presumed African-American and not white like early minstrel shows) donning blackface and selling it to the masses through the venue of a music video/minstrel show. Now, we all know that the majority of society, especially American society, forms their judgments through the media, and what Fiasco is saying with this extended metaphor is that we are being sold these false, stereotypical images, and that popular African-Americans in the industry are being used as pawns to deliver these images. This is why Oxford titles the definition “black slang” instead of just “slang”–it is assumed that African-Americans are making these decisions, so the specificity within the definition is necessary.

How did Femmes Respond?

Some of the feminist-centered criticism I observed regarding “Bitch Bad” focuses on the fact that Fiasco feels obligated to address this even though he is a man, and that his decision to say being called a “lady” is better than “woman” perpetuates patriarchy and leaves no room for black women because the term “lady” was initially intended to be racially specific towards white women. These critiques hold true, but only in some instances.

First: how many black women within hip-hop currentlydo you see rejecting this notion of a bad bitch that are the forerunners of the genre (like Nicki Minaj-status of popularity)? I’ll wait…

Second: how many black women have achieved Nicki Minaj-status within hip hop as compared to men? I’ll still wait…

Third: It is okay to have allies who can do their part to address how folks within their identity add to the problem, which is what I believe Fiasco does partially.

Fourth: Before we get to the women vs. lady issue, we have to dismantle the bad-bitch schema and its power to consume the identities of women of color. It a huge task to accomplish and it cripples women of color moreso than any other term in our modern society.

The place where I fall in support of the femmes is there are instances in “Bitch Bad” where the blame is also placed on women, which I do not get down with (any “-isms” include prejudice plus power–women do not hold the power in this scenario). We see that in the first verse, where the boy accredits his mother with learning what a bad bitch is–the discussion of the father’s role or even the discussion of young boys watching music videos is left out. In the third verse as well, the boy has to be the one who rejects the girl, and the girl has to be the only one to have contradictory definitions of a bad bitch infused in her worldview. This infers that women the ones perpetuating the issue even though they hold less power (it is the man selling the “minstrel show”, not the woman).

I still struggle with the term “lady”, mainly because I grew up learning that the word should be used a way to respectfully address your female elders. The racial implications of “lady” were not addressed to me until recently.

Wrapping Up 

Hopefully, with this addition to the controversy surrounding the word “bitch”, we can better address its impact on women across all identities. It can be more crippling that just being referred to as an unpleasant person. It can, and often does, affect some women’s standing and quality of life in all sectors of society.

Bitch History

Bitch is one of the most complicated insults in the English language. A bitch typically means a lewd, malicious, irritating woman (the comparison being to a dog in heat), but some women self-identify asbitches to indicate they are strong, assertive and independent. A son of a bitch is generally a despicable or otherwise hateful man, but can also mean a dear friend who has done something impressive or clever. If something is bitchin’ it is deemed to be particularly cool or in-style, but if a person is bitching they are complaining or whining. To be someone’s bitch is to be his or her servant or slave, to sit in the bitch seat is to sit in the under-sized seat in the middle of a car, to bitch slap is to strike with an open palm. Bitch might have originally meant a female dog, but now it can indicate anything from slapstick humor to scathing insult.

The rise of bitch through history can be traced to 4 distinct periods: The Definition, The Rise, the Reclamation, and the Popularization. The last 3 can be tied to specific events in American feminism.

[Author’s note: All of the data regarding the popularity of words through time come from Google’s Ngram viewer, which displays the prevalence of a word or words in Google’s Book Database. Neither Google nor I claim this database to be complete, but as it has over 15 million titles it is sufficiently representative of English publications for this analysis]

I: The Definition

Insulting a woman by calling her a female dog pre-dates the existence of the word bitch itself. The English language historian Geoffrey Hughes suggests the connection came about because of the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis (Diana in the Roman pantheon) who was often portrayed with a pack of hunting dogs and sometimes transformed into an animal herself. In Ancient Greece and Rome the comparison was a sexist slur equating women to dogs in heat, sexually depraved beasts who grovel and beg for men1.

The modern word bitch comes from the Old English bicce, which probably developed from the Norse bikkje, all meaning ‘female dog’. Its use as an insult was propagated into Old English by the Christian rulers of the Dark Age to suppress the idea of femininity as sacred. The insult “son of a bitch” (biche sone in Old English) originated to ridicule spiritual pagans, who worshipped the bitch goddess Diana1. The phrase evolved to mean a generally despicable or otherwise hateful man. Shakespeare, that master of verbal barbs, uses the insult twice in his plays. Once in Troilus and Cressida (1602), in the opening of Act II as Ajax comes upon Thersites2.

Thou bitch-wolf’s son, canst thou not hear?

[beating him]

Feel, then.

And again in King Lear (1606), when the Earl of Kent is greeting Oswald2:

…[thou] art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.

Interestingly, nowhere in his collected works does Shakespeare ever use the word to insult a woman. At first, one might think this reveals a chivalrous objection to insulting women – but a similar search forwhore reveals five pages of results. As a playwright known for his imaginative (and numerous) insults, his omission of bitch as a female insult indicates something about the common usage of the word in his time. In fact, much of the documented usage of the word from the 16th and 17th centuries is in reference to a man, not a woman. In Henry Brinklow’s 1524 Complaynt of Roderyck Mor, he calls out the hypocrisy of the clergy for valuing un-wed chastity by describing the bishops “as chast as a sawt bytch.”3 In modern English: “as pure as a randy bitch.” An early 16th century manuscript known only as “The Porkington Manuscript” includes a re-telling of a humorous story about a Friar and a cheeky Boy. The Friar, complaining of the Boy’s antics, says “Be God, he ys a schrewd byche, In fayth, y trow, he be a wyche.” In modern English: “By god, he is a shrewd bitch. In faith, I know, he is a witch.”4

It seems the Dark Age Christian attempt to re-purpose the insult worked. While the word by itself may have described a female entity, its abusive power at the end of the Middle Ages lied in its application to a man – not only putting him down by calling him a woman, but further dehumanizing by equating him with a dirty female animal.

The 18th century saw a return to the original insulting meaning of bitch. Indeed, use of the insult grew so dominant that it finally forced the literal meaning of the word, that of female dog, out of common circulation. While science publications and dog enthusiast communities retained the word bitch, various euphemisms such as doggess, lady dog, she dog, and puppy’s mother were more commonly used1. The usage of bitch held steady for the next 200 years. At the cusp of the 20th century, Slang and its Analogues gave a succinct definition and partial history of the term5.

Bitch:

1.  An opprobrious term for a woman, generally containing an implication of lewdness and ‘fastness.’ Not now in literary use, though formerly so. [From its primary sense of a female dog] It is the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore.
2.  (old) Applied, opprobriously, as in sense 1, to a man. It has long since passed out of decent usage.

II: The Rise

The first serious rise in the usage of bitch begins at 1920 – exactly the same year as another feminist milestone in the United States: suffrage. The 19th amendment to the US constitution was ratified on August 18th, 1920. After decades of struggle, women finally received the right to vote. But as women became more public, so too did their critics. Now that women were appearing more and more on the American stage, the insult bitch began to slip slowly into popular discourse.

Of the books published in 1915 that contain the word “bitch,” all are journals of dogs or veterinary medicine, law books explaining cases involving dogs, and the occasional court case in which the transcript includes some man calling another a “son of a bitch.”

Within the books published in 1925, merely 10 years later but on the other side of the 19th amendment, there is fiction, magazine articles, and even some quotes from news sources that use bitch to insult a woman. Through the years this trend continues – in fact, by 1930 references to the word as an insult to a woman outnumber the references to a female dog.

So what changed?

The answer lies in the connotation of the insult itself. Of the publications from this period, the uses ofbitch can be grouped into three categories of meaning:

1. Malicious or consciously attempting to harm
2. Difficult, annoying, or interfering
3. Sexually brazen or overly vulgar

These three traits combined form a perfect picture of the angry 1st wave feminist that many suffragist opponents feared, a kind of anti-lady. The dystopia predicted by those opponents, both men and women, is summed up well in remarks made by a Representative from Alabama in 19186:

There will be no more domestic tranquility in this nation. No more “Home Sweet Home,” no more lullabies to the baby. Suffrage will destroy the best thing in our lives and leave in our hearts an aching void that the world can never fill.

Angry, dangerous, and independent, these suffragists had stomped in and broken up the status quo, interfering in the lives of ordinary folk and harming the “domestic tranquility” that had been the pinnacle of American happiness. This was a new type of woman, one America hadn’t been forced to seriously consider before.  There had to be a name for these women. They found one: these new feminists were a bunch of uppity, interfering bitches.

III: The Reclamation

The popularity of bitch dipped slightly around the late 30s and early 40s, possibly due to an increase of chivalry and respect towards the women who played an important part in the war effort (or just because everyone had better things to write about). After the war, use of the word popped back up and continued steadily until around 1965 when it experienced a sudden rise in use.

Again we see a correlation with a significant change in the feminist movement. 1963 saw both the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, and the release of the final report of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women7 8. Both bemoaned the poor status of women in an apparently free and equal society, both brought forth the startling notion that women who lived the life of a perfect housewife might have many good reasons to not be happy. These ideas sparked the 2nd wave of feminism which, after the success of the 1st wave in removing many legal barriers to equality, moved on to addressing women’s issues in the home, the workplace, the family, and in their own reproductive rights.

The 1960’s found women gaining a sense of pride in many of the things their opponents criticized them for: assertiveness, strength, independence, and a willingness to fight for their own definition of happiness. In 1968, Jo Freeman (Joreen) published The BITCH Manifesto, a document that defines the bitches of 2ndwave feminism9.

Our society has defined humanity as male, and female as something other than male. In this way, females could be human only by living vicariously thru a male. To be able to live, a woman has to agree to serve, honor, and obey a man and what she gets in exchange is at best a shadow life. Bitches refuse to serve, honor or obey anyone. They demand to be fully functioning human beings, not just shadows. They want to be both female and human.

Suddenly, the ideal qualities of a feminist and the definition of a bitch matched up. Feminists began to self-identify as bitches, and use it in their writings. The insult became a rallying cry, a signal to women that these things that have hurt us can be changed for the better. All these things women used to be insulted for now became a goal.

We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever. (close of the BITCH Manifesto)9

IV: The Popularization

By the time Feminism began its 3rd wave, reclaiming bitch was an official part of many feminist’s agenda. 1996 saw the first publication of Bitch Magazine, a periodical giving a “feminist response to pop culture.”10One of the magazine’s founders, Andi Zeisler, explained in a 2006 interview that they chose the name explicitly because they wished to reclaim the word11.

When we chose the name, we were thinking, well, it would be great to reclaim the word “bitch” for strong, outspoken women, much the same way that “queer” has been reclaimed by the gay community. That was very much on our minds, the positive power of language reclamation.

Due to the efforts of Zeisler and many others, bitch began appearing everywhere – on bookshelves, on clothing, on food labels, and in the words of popular media. Being a bitch wasn’t just for feminists anymore. Shirts with “You Messed with the Wrong Bitch!” on them started selling in children’s sizes. Buttons saying “The Birthday Bitch” appeared in novelty shops. In 1999 best selling author Elizabeth Wurtzel published Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women12. In it, she lays out a view of bitch that was a bit different from Joreen’s BITCH Manifesto.

I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale’s if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy.

The idea of self-reliance and a freedom to chase their own desires remained, but now bitches weren’t outcasts. Bitches shopped at Bloomingdales, bitches socialized with other women, telling intimate details to strangers. Bitches had become public.

It wasn’t just feminists that started popularizing the word. The 1990’s saw the rise of “Gangsta rap,” a style of hip hop that often contained profanity and descriptions of violence towards women. A 1991 album by “Bust Down” was titled Nasty Bitch, and featured an anthropomorphized dog stomping a woman’s head into the ground on the cover13. Along with the continuing reclamation of the word came a backlash that increased the use of bitch as a violent insult.

V: Modern Day

Nowadays people can read a diet book titled Skinny Bitch, drink many varietals of Sassy Bitch Wine, make new friends at a “Stitch ‘n Bitch” knitting club, listen to Meredith Brooks sing “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother” or dance to Ludacris’ stirring lyrics “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way.”

Bitch has come a far way from the “most offensive appellation” to women it was at the end of the 20thcentury. The 1st wave feminists of the 1920’s gave it an identity, the 2nd wave feminists grabbed it from the voices of their critics and reclaimed it as theirs, and the 3rd wave brought it forth, polished it up, and presented it to the world. From biche sone to bitch, please, the word has had a long and busy history, making it now one of the most common, and most complicated, swear words in America.

Found at http://clarebayley.com/2011/06/bitch-a-history/  

Evolution of the Bitch

It’s the original insult. It needs no introduction, no following; it works as a standalone slur for just about any scenario. Whether someone jostles you on the subway, beats you at poker, or breaks your heart, all you need is one word: bitch.

Or at least that’s how it used to be. Calling someone a bitch used to be pretty straightforward, but today—after many adaptations, reinventions, and attempts to reclaim the word—it's not totally clear what "bitch" really means anymore. There are bad bitches and basic bitches; rich bitches and ratchet bitches; even perfect bitches, as Kanye West once famously described Kim Kardashian. You can bitch-slap someone, wear a resting bitch face, or just tag the word onto the end of a sentence, as in, “I’m in Miami, bitch!” When the word “bitching” is used as a verb, it means to complain; when it’s used as an adjective, it means to be cool. To be “someone’s bitch” can mean either to be owned by that person or to be his or her BFF—unless you're someone's "prison bitch," which always means the former.

The word has been so splintered that it’s unclear where “bitch” stands today, and how—if at all—we should use it. Can feminists call themselves bitches? Can men call other women bitches? Do you think I'm a bitch? We traced the evolution of the word, and the women who took on its meaning, to try to figure out where “bitch” stands today.

The Genesis: Lady Dogs

Everyone knows that once upon a time, a bitch was simply a lady dog. Trace its lineage in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, and you’ll find that it's been used as a derogatory term for women as early as the 15th century. Back then, it was considered demoralizing mostly because it suggested that the woman in question was promiscuous (an allusion to the fact that female dogs have so many puppies), according to English language historian Geoffrey Hughes. This is, of course, why "son of a bitch" had such a sting: It meant your mother was a whore. That said, “bitch” was far from the most popular insult in Ye Olde English. Dudes like Chaucer preferred the use of words like “whore” or “sluttish."

“Bitch” didn’t really catch on as the universal female insult until the 1920s, when all of a sudden its use ballooned. Between 1915 and 1930, the use of "bitch" in newspapers and literature more than doubled. What happened? Women's suffrage.

That’s right. That Susan B. Anthony bitch got the right to vote, and men were not happy about it. Soon after, "bitch" became an all-purpose insult for annoying women. Ernest Hemingway seemed to fall in love with the word, calling many of his female characters "bitch goddesses" and, after a falling-out with Gertrude Stein, gifting her a signed copy ofDeath in the Afternoon with the inscription "a bitch is a bitch is a bitch." He had a way with words, that Hemingway.

The slur had another surge of popularity in the 1970s, particularly in music. Miles Davis named his 1970 jazz album Bitches Brew (the title, purportedly, referred to the talent of the artists on the album); the Rolling Stones recorded “Bitch” in 1971; Elton John came out with “The Bitch is Back” in 1974. Then, at the crowning of Second Wave feminism, Jo Freeman wrote The Bitch Manifesto, which declared: “We must be strong, we must be militant, we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose.”

"Bitch," it seemed, was turning its face toward feminism.

The Rise: Da Baddest Bitch 
If “bitch” was to become a flagship for feminism, it first needed women to wear its badge. That didn’t happen right away, since “bitch” was still freighted with man-hating stigma—in some ways, increasingly so. Back in the day, "bitch" had only referred to a woman who was promiscuous; later, it evolved into an insult for a woman who had done you wrong. But by the 80s, "bitch" turned violent and misogynist, harboring a much darker tone than before.

Throughout the 80s, hip-hop lay claim to the word and promoted much of the violence associated with it. Slick Rick was among the first rappers to employ the word in the 1985 song “La Di Da Di,” where the “bitch” in the song is a jealous and violent woman. A year later, Ice-T rapped about beating up a “bitch” who talked back to him, in “Six in Da Morning.” The NWA song “Bitch Iz a Bitch” (1989) defined a bitch as a woman who was manipulative, conniving, and moneyhungry; Dr. Dre plainly described them as "hoes and tricks" in "Bitches Ain't Shit" (1992). The word was fraught with violent connotations, and the message was clear: Bitches needed to watch their step, because they had it coming for them.

Given all the bad PR, women weren’t really into self-labeling as "bitches" just yet. Queen Latifah flat-out rejected the term in her 1993 song “U.N.I.T.Y.,” which opens with the question: “Who you callin’ a bitch?” Meredith Brooks gave the word a softer interpretation in the song "Bitch" (1997), but still basically defined "bitchiness" as a symptom of PMS.

But then came Trina. Her 1999 not-quite-hit single, “Da Baddest Bitch,” recharacterized the term as a symbol of empowerment. A “bad bitch,” by her definition, was smart and powerful and—perhaps most important—in charge of her sexuality. With her hard beats and don't-give-a-fuck attitude, she took the word back within the very genre that had corrupted it in the first place.

Although she never used the word “feminism,” Trina interlaced many of the aims of the movement with her reinvented concept of the “bad bitch." Her lyrics were ahead of their time, with declarations like "it pays to be the boss" and "stay ahead of the game / save up and buy a condo." Best of all, Trina loved sex and she loved to rap about it. She would eventually release a song called “Nasty Bitch,” which described her sexual prowess in graphic detail; in "Da Baddest Bitch," she plainly stated, "If I had the chance to be a virgin again / I'd be fucking by the time I'm ten." In some ways, we could consider Trina a purist in how she defined "bitch," since she preserved the original meaning of the word: a woman who was excessively sexual. Except for that Trina outwardly embraced her sexuality, and in doing so, she turned the definition of "bitch" on its head.

The 90s were a time of critical rebranding for “bitch.” Women who had previously shied away from the word started to embrace it. Take Madonna, who had stated in an interview in 1991: “I am ambitious and I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I’ve made good by behaving bad. But I’m no bitch.” Just four years later, in another interview, Madonna totally reversed the sentiment: “I’m tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, OK.” (Nowadays, if you ask Siri to look up “unapologetic bitch,” she takes you straight to Madonna’s Wikipedia page.)

If "bitch" was ever to be reclaimed, it was during this era of "girl power." In 1996, feminists Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler founded Bitch magazine and, when asked how they chose the title, Zeisler explained: “It would be great to reclaim the word ‘bitch’ for strong, outspoken women, much the same way that ‘queer’ has been reclaimed by the gay community.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel echoed the sentiment in her 1998 book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, where she also aligned bitchiness with feminist goals: “I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy.”

The Mainstreamification: It’s Britney, Bitch 
“Bitch” was everywhere by the turn of the millennium. The use of the word on television shows tripled between 1998 and 2007, which had much to do with the word's feminist facelift in the previous decade. But with mainstreamification comes misunderstanding.

A brief sampling of music in the early 2000s reveals rampant disagreement over the word’s definition: Jay-Z used the word as a stand-in for “woman” in “99 Problems” (2003). Rock band Buckcherry released “Crazy Bitch” (2006)—their most popular song to-date—about a woman who was bananas in bed. Busta Rhymes used the word affectionately in “I Love My Bitch” (2006). Kelis, of “Milkshake” fame, enthusiastically declared “I’m bossy! I’m the bitch y’all love to hate” the same year, in “Bossy.” There wasn’t much agreement on what a bitch was, but as Too $hort put it in 2006, “One thing’s for sure / You will get called a bitch / Bitch!”

Even Britney Spears, whose public image had thus far been sweet, demure, and innocent (but not that innocent) started to announce herself in 2007 by saying, “It’s Britney, bitch!” The word had gone totally mainstream.

All women—and sometimes, men—were eligible for the "bitch" label, in some form or other. It became an all-purpose salutation (as in, “what’s up my bitchezzzzzz?”). Gay men and Valley girls started affectionately calling their friends “betches.” People invented new iterations, like "beyotch" and "biznatch." It became a meme. Lady Gaga called herself a "free bitch, baby!" David Guetta’s summer club-banger in 2009 was “Sexy Bitch,” which didn’t seem to have any lyrical point whatsoever, other than to suggest that “every girl wanna be her” because she, the subject of the song, was a “sexy bitch.”

The word "bitch" was like a handful of Silly Putty—you could make it into anything you wanted. To be sure, it was still used to call out mean women (as Mean Girls taught us in 2004, if you're a "mean girl" then you're also a "bitch") and it was still used to promote the feminist cause. But sometimes, and increasingly so, the word didn't really mean anything at all.

The Fragmentation: Bad Bitches Only 
Since it had developed so many incongruous meanings, “bitch” briefly became controversial again in the late 2000s. Women had tried to reclaim it, but was it really OK to call a woman a bitch? Didn't the term still promote sexism, misogyny, and the patriarchy? Was “bitch” a form of linguistic violence?

There were certainly lots of people who thought so. In 2007, the New York City Council attempted to ban its usage, citing its “deeply sexist and hateful” connotation. A yet, a few years later in 2012, the Federal Communications Commission took the opposite stance and ruled to unbleep the word on television networks, suggesting that it was harmless.

Such contradiction! Such confusion! What did it all mean? Nobody knew. After Jay Z and Kanye West recorded the song “That’s My Bitch” on their 2011 album Watch the Throne, both artists seemed to have existentialist struggles with the word, bringing the "bitch" controversy back into the spotlight. There were rumors that Jay Z would swear off the word when Blue Ivy was born in 2012 (but then he was like, “Siiiiike! I’m a rapper!” and continued to use the word egregiously). In 2013, Kanye published a string of tweets debating whether or not using the word “bitch” was OK. (His final verdict? It's totally OK to call women "bitches"—and Kim is the perfect bitch.)

What remained problematic, however, was the way “bitch” related to power dynamics. When women have too much power, they’re called bitches as a way to knock them down a peg. But when men aren’t asserting enough power, they’re called bitches too. In the E-40 and Too $hort song "Bitch" (2010), we hear both versions of the word: E-40 tells men "don't act like a bitch" and criticizes men who have "feminine tendencies like a bitch," but also calls a woman who has sex with multiple men a "bitch."

It was clear that the word could sometimes refer to a woman laying claim to their own power, as in the 2012 PTAF song “Boss Ass Bitch,” which proudly declares “I’M A BOSS ASS BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH.” (A year later, Nicki Minaj remixed it, because that beat is so, so good.) This was also seen in the Britney Spears song “Work Bitch,” which has motivated women everywhere to push through one more minute on the StairMaster. But it could also be an assertion of power over others—either from one woman to other women, as in Beyoncé’s song “Bow Down (Bitches);" a man to a man, as in Ludacris' "Move, Bitch;" or, most commonly, a man to a woman, as in Tyler the Creator's "Bitch Suck Dick," which suggests women should use their mouths for giving blowjobs, not talking.

According to Dr. Christopher J. Schneider, a sociologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada who has studied how "bitch" is used in rap music, the word is so damn popular—both in a negative and a positive light—because of its relationship to the patriarchy. "The dominant role and conditions of patriarchy help enable the widespread use and acceptance of the term—both as misogyny, and also as a form of empowerment used to counter patriarchy."

Nowhere is this clearer than in politics, where pretty much any woman in power is called a bitch. If Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel had a nickel for every time they were called "bitches," they'd have enough money to pay off the national debt in both of their countries. There was a real article about Janet Yellen earlier this year entitled “Janet Yellen: The Bitch of the Fed.” And poor Katie Couric—what the hell did she ever do to deserve the bitch title? But if you can’t change the word, change the conversation. Ruth Bader Ginsberg was apparently called a “bitch” all throughout law school, to which sheresponded: “Better bitch than mouse.” Call them bitches if you want, but bitches get stuff done.

The Present: Bitch Bad, Woman Good
These days, "bitch" has been used to death—to the point where all of its meaning has pretty much rubbed off, and it's honestly become a little boring. Oh, you're calling me a bitch? Yawn.

That said, most scholars, linguists, and women alike would agree that the word hasn't really been rehabilitated to mean something wholly positive. "I recognize that some women feel empowered by the word, but that doesn't mean they are empowered by it," said Dr. Sherryl Kleinman, a sociologist who wrote about the social harms of the word in 2009. Sheryl Sandberg underscored this idea in a recent op-ed for Cosmopolitan and started a campaign to Ban Bossy, which is basically like the PG-version of "bitch." In April, Duke University launched the "You Don't Say" campaign, where students argued against using the word because it "insists femininity is inherently negative." 

As Lupe Fiasco so eloquently put it: “Bitch bad, woman good, lady better.”

But perhaps the problem isn’t really so much what we call women—it’s how we treat women. "Bitch" has come a long way, sure, but perhaps the reason it hasn't been truly reclaimed is because conditions for women haven't really changed, either. If there ever comes a time when women aren't made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, when they don't have to fight for fair wages or the opportunity to speak in a meeting, when they don't constantly fear the possibility of violence or sexual assault, and when women feel that they have some say in the society that we live in, then "bitch" will shed that last layer of stigma for good. Words only make sense in context. When we see the day when the context is changed, then the core meaning of the word will change, too.

But has that day arrived yet? Bitch, please.

Found at http://www.vice.com/read/the-evolution-of-the-bitch-905